An old man told a little boy, life is a battle between two wolves inside you. One wolf represents anger, jealousy, shame, guilt, and hate. The other represents serenity, triumph, joy, happiness, and love. The old boy then asked, which one wins in the end? And the old man answered, the wolf you feed.

How AMAZING and under-appreciated is it that we live in a time where I can take Beethoven, Brahms, Debussy, John Williams, Bach, and Hans Zimmer with me on my iPod and appreciate their genius, eat up their music, without having to go to the symphony hall. I just can’t take for granted how blessed we are to have access to all this music, to experience this food for the soul, not just music, and listen to it over and over again. Beethoven never had the chance to hear what Debussy would invent and Debussy never had the chance to hear John Williams, Gershwin or Jazz… but we can listen to all those guys… at a mere click of a button in our palm! Tonight I discovered Brahms’s Requiem for the first time while walking my dogs. Personally, I prefer listening to classical music on my headphones a million times more than going to a concert. Music is a personal thing. You create your own associations. You make it your own experience, and you give it your own personal spiritual meaning. I don’t enjoy sitting stiffly doing that as I do living my life doing the things I enjoy. Chopin on a rainy day. Mozart late at night. Zimmer’s Dark Knight while walking the streets of New York looking up at the shadows cast by skyscrapers. Beethoven’s 9th while running at full speed… It’s all magic.

The same applies to the great writers. How amazing is it that we have the chance to read Tolstoy, Hugo, Twain, Emerson… all these guys that I’m being inspired by in 2011, while also having the hindsight to reflect on things that those guys would never foresee: WWI, WWII, Albert Einstein, Steven Spielberg, the art of Cinema, Pink Floyd, Alexandre Desplat… modern music… whatever makes you excited!

Add to that Wikipedia, YouTube’s plethora of historical archives, and Netflix streaming’s infinite amount of documentaries and films available at the click of the mouse.

So in summary… we are so lucky to live in a time where we have the chance to discover all this wealth of art and knowledge to draw from, experience, and be inspired by.

Whether it’s in the filmmaking process or in day to day life, pressure is our best friend. Without pressure nothing gets done. Without pressure everybody relaxes. Pressure is our best ally, so get ready to embrace it and if it’s not there, then you have to create it and invite it into your daily life so that you can keep pushing yourself and your team. For the purposes of this blog, i would like to write about pressure during the production/filming stage because that’s where it’s at its very highest. Making movies can be like a battlefield sometimes. The key to survival is in knowing how to dance with pressure.

What does that mean, dancing with pressure? The best way I can describe it is that it has to be like Aikido. I’m not a martial artist, but the concept of Aikido is that where you take negative energy charging against you and you turn it into positive energy to help you. You have to handle it with grace. And the same goes with filmmaking. As the director, you get bombarded with surprises and limitations and challenges because you’re trying to control all the unpredictable outside variables to come together to make a scene work. But there is something magical that just clicks at some point when you let things fall into harmony. It’s a dance with the elements. You have to drive this marriage of actors and camera and production design and sound and locations and weather and the rotation of the earth. You cannot control any of these elements. You can only dance with them to make them work together. This might sound like a bunch of bullshit to some but when you’re on set shooting, you will know what I mean.

The only way to conquer pressure is to be in harmony with it. You have to move fast, think fast, communicate in very simple terms, clear and sometimes even non-verbally. That’s the magic of directing for me. You have to see the movie in your head, but also let everyone bring their magic to it, and somehow something truly special comes together. Of course you have to have craft and know what you’re doing, but beyond that, you have invite magic so that magic can happen, and if you let yourself crack under pressure, the magic will never happen. So you must dance the dance.

More details on that in another blog soon.

This is an amazing discussion between Steven Spielberg, James Cameron, and JJ Abrams. Clear your schedule and enjoy an hour and a half listening to this great humble man talking about how he works. It’s awesome!!!

The first window on the left is the full event. The others break it down into segments. I recommend the full event. This is so inspiring!

http://www.dga.org/Events/2011/08-august-2011/75th-Spielberg-Event.aspx#anchor

FIND THE CLICHES
It’s inevitable that something in your script will be influenced by some other film we’ve all seen before. You don’t need to run away from this or accept it as “Oh well, it is what it is.” You have to deal with it if you want to make something decent. Whether you’re writing or working from someone else’s writing, if something sounds cliched look for a new way to make it fresh. The variables are infinite. The biggest problem isn’t lack of possibilities. It’s lack of awareness. Be aware of blatant boring cliches or else you will suck! Only once you’ve identified the cliche will you be able to bring something original to the scene using subtext to give it new meaning. Here are a couple of examples of great movie moments that really stand out for me.

LESS IS MORE

In THE DARK KNIGHT, the last Batman movie, there’s a scene where Heath Ledger, the Joker, walks in to see Harvey Dent (who will soon become Two-Face) at the hospital. He comes in because he needs him as an accomplice, despite the fact that he (the Joker) is the reason half this guy’s face and body have been burnt beyond recognition. The brilliant magic of the scene, what made it unbelievably funny and sadistic at the same time, is the moment the Joker comes in and says “Hi”. That’s all he said. Hi. But the subtext of it was loaded with “Hi, sorry I fucked up your life and ruined your future, not to mention the pain in your burnt face and body and any possibility of finding love ever again, but I’m here to say sorry and hope you’ll get over your misfortune so we can now become partners in crime and wreack havoc on Gotham City!” It was such an incredible performance! All that was contained in the way he said hi.

Performance is everything. When you find yourself in a scene where you know that the dialog is cheesy or cliched, take it out and reduce it to the bare minimum, and let the abstract magic of the performance make it original. We’ve heard lines of dialogue repeated from movie to movie before, but how often can you say that a certain depth in a character’s eyes or vocal intonation is cliched? That’s the secret place where the magic hides. And if you want to get that magic, you have to cast the right person… and direct them with simple objectives to let them bring their own magic to the scene. (Next Blog I’ll refocus on Objective and Obstacle)

GANGS OF NEW YORK is an imperfect film, but there’s a scene that never left my head and I think is truly a testament to the power of moments where great writing and performance come together. Daniel Day-Lewis plays the Butcher who killed Leonardo DeCaprio’s father, and has since become sort of like a mentor/father-figure to him (yet Leo wants to kill him and avenge his father). So there’s a lovely intimate scene between the two of them, a really powerful moment where the Butcher says to Leo, “I never had a son.” And your ear expects him at that moment to continue and say, “but you’re my son now” because that’s the obvious cliche. But he doesn’t. He only says “I never had a son.” and his eyes say everything else, and we the audience fill in the blanks, which is what makes that scene so amazing. The magic is in the extended moment of silence after the dialogue.

Those are just a couple of examples where Less is More. I fully believe in that. In both Captain Abu Raed and The United, I stripped so much dialogue out and the scenes got better. Too often we think that everything needs to be said, and end up falling into the biggest cliche of all, overwritten dialogue. So there you go. Try it on your own scripts and see where you can find the magic in the abstract.

FIND SOURCES OF INSPIRATION

WATCH FILMS:
Watch films similar to the one you’re making to see what works and what doesn’t work. You don’t want to imitate other films, but you save yourself a lot of troubke if you learn from other filmmakers’ past experiences doing what you’re trying to do. Listen to interviews. Look at techniques used and artistic choices. Story structure. Break down similar films and understand the fabric that makes the successful ones work. Listen to audio commentary tracks from DVD’s where you’ll be able to pick up jewels of wisdom here and there drawn from direct experience.

For The United, I watched every sports film I could get my hands on to see how people used camera, editing, sound design…etc. to capture the action.
I watched Japanese Anime (in Arabic called Captain Majid) for shot composition and slo-motion stylization. I looked at 300 for the ramping slo-mo effects and Saving Private Ryan for some of the action camera work in the opening scene.

I looked at Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai and Yojimbo to look at how he framed shots where he had to place ten people together in the same shot.

Using space to create depth

I looked at soccer films to see how they worked defining the geography and space. Learned a lot about the need to shoot audience reactions and specific narrative guides to keep the movie’s audience on track following the game while not losing the character drama. I also watched a lot of soccer games on TV and the Internet for ideas.

For Captain Abu Raed, I watched and was influenced by the following films: Cinema Paradiso (influenced tone, romanticized look, and relationship between Alfredo and Toto)

Il Postino (influenced the innocence of the characters and some of the composition in the film)

Umberto D (De Sica), Ikiru (Kurosawa), The 400 Blows (Truffaut), One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (Foreman) – Bits and pieces of all those films have somehow shaped my approach to Captain Abu Raed, not just visually, but also on the actual performances.

Braveheart (Gibson) Not for the battles and epic scope, but for the structure of the story. Strangely enough, you will find that Captain Abu Raed and Braveheart have an identical structure imbedded in Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey:
The call to “adventure”, Rejecting the call, Being dragged into the “adventure”, Growth of relationships throughout the struggle of escalation (includes betrayal), Sacrifice/Death, Transcendence, and Rebirth – In Braveheart, the metaphor of William Wallace reborn to continue the adventure through Robert the Bruce; in Captain Abu Raed, Murad carries the torch that Abu Raed lit in him. Yet neither film is similar in any way on the surface.

CONSULT WITH TECHNICAL EXPERTS:
I hung out with a soccer coach and watched the training, running around with my camera to look for ideas on how to shoot. I talked with people who educated me on the way clubs work and the tiers they go through to get to national and international competitions.

READ BOOKS: For The United, I read soccer strategy and training manuals. For Captain Abu Raed, I read The Alchemist, Hero of a Thousand Faces, Old Man and the Sea, and Tuesdays with Maurie

COLLECT VISUAL REFERENCES:
I collected visual references from sports and non-sports films onto my iPad browsing through google images. Look at paintings. There’s so much out there to draw from. Just let all those images seep into your subconscious, and they will inspire you at the right moment. Open yourself to be influenced by art and photographs. One of my favorite things about making films is that you get to research and learn about new things all the time when you’re in prep. Take advantage of that opportunity to learn.

LISTEN TO MUSIC:
Listen to music that can influence your movie. I’m a huge fan film of film scores, so I draw on them for influence. Let music give birth to ideas. This happens more often in the writing process (when I wrote Captain, I was listening to a lot of Ennio Morricone) but in the case of The United, there is a bad-ass training montage that came in the prep process just a couple of months before shooting as a result of listening to one of composer Omar Fadel’s previous scores. The piece of music gave birth to that training montage, which then ended up inspiring Omar to write the bad-ass song that you will hear in the film when it comes out. Let the elements organically grow by keeping yourselfg open to sources of inspiration.

EXPLORE YOUR LOCATIONS:
As you look for locations, always keep an open mind. Look for how various locations can influence your film. With Captain Abu Raed, the original idea was that Abu Raed sat under a tree telling the kids his stories (the original script was called “Under The Tree, Over the Ocean”), but then when I was scouting and found those giant roman columns, it became an obvious opportunity. I found incredible beauty in Salt’s Jerusalem stone and ancient architecture, so I filmed Abu Raed’s neighborhood there instead of in Amman, but used the Roman columns and East Amman rooftops as if they were in the same neighborhood. Let locations inspire you.

Producer David Pritchard sitting in for Captain, during our scout in 2006, a year before filming.

Likewise, for The United, there was a football game that was scripted to take place in the same field the players were training in throughout the film. But I needed to open up the movie and find something different. I changed the location to somewhere next to a busy street to inject the film with new energy, but then while scouting around sports city in Amman, I realized that it would be so much more beautiful if we set the game in the forrest, surrounded by greenery everywhere. Wait till you see how good it looks now. Always look for inspiration in your locations. Explore them and open up your movie.

That’s the kind of stuff you need to do. Immerse yourself in experience so that when it’s time to shoot, you’re ready to mesh all these things together.
When you have those elements, you can have more interesting storyboards, sketches, and shot lists to take into the production phase.

Okay, you get the idea. Let existing material inspire you, be they locations, images, other films, books, filmmakers. Immerse yourself in the universe of the film you’re about to make, and through you, a new piece of art will filter out.

9 – Create magic using SUBTEXT. Use all the filmmaking elements to bring out the subtext: blocking, camera, lighting, music, production design, editing, rhythm, color, costume. Subtext is anything that can give dialog a deeper meaning or a different layer. Someone could be saying something, but your other elements tell the audience that he means exactly the opposite.

8 – Don’t be afraid to say “I’m not sure” if someone asks you a question that you don’t have the answer for. Engage by COLLABORATION. Filmmaking is nothing if it’s not about collaboration. You don’t have to be an expert in every department to be a good director. You have to be an expert on how to treat people with RESPECT and how to engage them to bring out their creative best to suit your vision for the film. And don’t forget to have fun and laugh every once in a while.

7 – Do your HOMEWORK before you shoot because when you’re on set, you have to be able to throw everything away to adapt to your challenges, and you can’t throw it away if you don’t know what you’re replacing. Preparation will free you on set.

6 – LESS IS MORE: If dialog sounds like it’s on the nose, then it probably is, so get rid of it and the scene will get better. Trust the intelligence of your audience. They will be more engaged if you don’t spoon feed them everything. Let them discover things and you’ll keep them engaged.

5 – ADAPT and THINK POSITIVE. In production, things go wrong all the time. They’re supposed to, otherwise something is wrong with the world. You never get what you want all the time. Always find opportunities for creativity in those surprises and limitations. Directing is adapting. When something isn’t working out, whether logistically or artistically, think quickly on your feet on how you can make it work, and make it work better. Your best bet to being a good director is to BE A GOOD PROBLEM SOLVER. Always think positive.

4 – If you make a drama, balance it with HUMOR. If you make a comedy, commit the actors to the motivation and action on screen as much as they would in a drama. For my taste, humor makes a good drama better.

3 – CASTING, CASTING, CASTING! – never underestimate how casting the right people will make your movie work, and casting the wrong ones will make your life very difficult, and hurt your movie.

2 – SHOOT THE STORY, NOT THE PLOT. Some scenes can stay conventional, but never miss the opportunity to let the camera participate with a narrative point of view. Find the story in every individual scene, and make sure it fits the greater whole. Always look for the beginning, middle, and end of a scene and ask yourself how the characters have changed or been affected by the end of the scene.

1 - PERFORMANCE IS EVERYTHING You can have flashy cinematography and amazing editorial tricks and gorgeous music, but if you don’t have performance, then you don’t got diddly.

And one last thing. Make the cast and crew your family. Have fun together.

Let’s talk about the camera. Where you put the camera and how you move it in the scene is just as important as the performances you get from your actors. The angle you shoot from, how you frame the shot, and what you do with the camera will help the performances and guide the audience toward your intention. Your relationship with your Cinematographer is key to getting the story across the way you want to communicate it. So you have to decide how you want to shoot your film.

There are two ways to shoot a scene:
1) Shooting Standard Coverage: Where you cover everything in the scene from multiple angles (Wide shot, Medium, Close Up, Over-the-shoulder…etc.). Clint Eastwood tends to do that. Very simple straight forward coverage.

or

2) Shooting with Subjectively Designed Shots – Where the camera moves from one beat to another to tell the story of the scene in specific pre-designed moves, focussing only on what your subjective narrative is, without capturing all the standard coverage of every line of dialogue. Think of Spielberg and Scorsese as an example.
Sometimes this also means no movement whatsoever (like in the excellent Rumanian film Four Months, Three Weeks, Two Days or the superb Korean film Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance, where director Chan Wook Park uses the lack of camera motion to create incredible tension).

SUBJECTIVE vs. OBJECTIVE
Here’s the tug of war you have to deal with when making your camera decisions. As a filmmaker, you want to capture the scene in a unique way to tell the story with the participation of the camera as an active narrative device (subjective) as opposed to passive/objective lens (unless it’s an intentionally passive shot). Yet the risk you take here is that you probably have fewer angles and shots to cut away to and from when you want to break up the scene in the editing room or use different performances from various takes. When you shoot standard coverage, you have all your bases covered because pretty much everyone’s lines are captured by the camera from multiple angles and you have more choices in the editing room.

The solution is somewhere in the balance between making sure you protect yourself from being cornered without coverage while also getting the artful shots you want to get. The reason you don’t always get both (especially with independent film) is because movie production is a race against the clock until you wrap. You simply don’t have the luxury of time. So you have to be prepared for the shoot with your shot list (which should always be flexible and never etched in stone – more on that in a later blog), be prepared to adapt, make short cuts, consolidate shots, and be efficient.

In this photo one camera is on a long lens for the close up, and the other is on a wide lens for the wide master. You save time with two cameras.

Shooting with Two Cameras:
Sometimes shooting the scene with two cameras can give you that extra flexibility. While it costs extra to rent a second camera and to have a crew running it, it will actually save you a lot of time (which equals money) to cover the scene while you also shoot the story, and you can have more flexibility for actors to improvise off script without worrying about not matching dialog with other takes.

When you use two cameras, focus on telling the story with Camera A, and you let Camera B fish for other coverage without getting in the way of Camera A. Sometimes if Camera B is on Steadycam, then you’ll more likely use it as your primary because…well, it’s your steadycam!

In my first film, I really resisted getting coverage because I was adamant that I want to only shoot the movie I see in my head. For my second film, I found that there are greater benefits to give yourself some extra room to play in the editing room. You will not regret it, and it’s worth the fight to shoot your film with two cameras.

I’ll focus more on composition, lenses, and other aspects of the camera some other time, but this subject of shooting for the story vs. shooting coverage is always something you’ll find yourself wrestling with when it’s time to shoot. You have to always actively strive for intelligent camera choices because under pressure, the safest thing to do is the objective standard wide, medium, close up. And you end up losing your voice as a filmmaker if you don’t strive to use the camera as a narrative device.